A Short History of Robots

Robot Timeline

~270BC an ancient Greek engineer named Ctesibus made organs and water
clocks with movable figures.

1818 - Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein" which was about
a frightening artificial lifeform created by Dr. Frankenstein.

1921 - The term "robot" was first used in a play called "R.U.R."
or "Rossum's Universal Robots" by the Czech writer Karel Capek. The plot was
simple: man makes robot then robot kills man!

1941 - Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov first used the word
"robotics" to describe the technology of robots and predicted the rise of a
powerful robot industry.

1942 - Asimov wrote "Runaround", a story about robots which
contained the "Three Laws of Robotics":

A robot may not injure a human, or, through inaction, allow a human being
to come to harm.

A robot must obey the orders it by human beings except where such orders
would conflic with the First Law.

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not
conflict withe the First or Second Law.

1948 - "Cybernetics", an influence on artificial intelligence
research was published by Norbert Wiener

1956 - George Devol and Joseph Engelberger formed the world's first
robot company.

1959 - Computer-assisted manufacturingg was demonstrated at the
Servomechanisms Lab at MIT.

1961 - The first industrial robot was online in a General Motors
automobile factory in New Jersey. It was called UNIMATE.

1963 - The first artificial robotic arm to be controlled by a
computer was designed. The Rancho Arm was designed as a tool for the
handicapped and it's six joints gave it the flexibility of a human arm.

1965 - DENDRAL was the first expert system or program designed to
execute the accumulated knowledge of subject experts.

1968 - The octopus-like Tentacle Arm was developed by Marvin
Minsky.

1969 - The Stanford Arm was the first electrically powered,
computer-controlled robot arm.

1970 - Shakey was introduced as the first mobile robot controlled
by artificial intellence. It was produced by SRI International.

1974 - A robotic arm (the Silver Arm) that performed small-parts
assembly using feedback from touch and pressure sensors was designed.

1979 - The Standford Cart crossed a chair-filled room without
human assistance. The cart had a tv camera mounted on a rail which took
pictures from multiple angles and relayed them to a computer. The computer
analyzed the distance between the cart and the obstacles.